


What If

by thesaltybitch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Space, Cute, Falling In Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Strippers & Strip Clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 09:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25967689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaltybitch/pseuds/thesaltybitch
Summary: Fed up with it all, Thor Odinson packed up everything he had and moved to another planet in search of a new life. Now, three years later, he's got nothing to show for it.After striking out on yet another date, he ends up at The Bifrost where he pays a dancer for an hour of his time.When fantasy and reality blur together, how do you know what's real when you think you're falling in love?
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 66





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the time I learned from a stripper that her favorite clients were the ones who just paid her to chat and generally be nice to them. 
> 
> Enjoy.

He was late. 

Fucking late. Loki nearly fell out of the speeder in his haste, making the vehicle rock and the driver pin him with a nasty look. The fare counter ticked up a couple more digits.

“Come on, give me a break!” Loki threw his hands up and snatched his bag, slinging it around his shoulder and teetering on the curb.

The driver scowled and began chattering at him in a language Loki only understood at significantly slower words per minute. He swore and rummaged around his bag for his money pouch and came across a few loose heavy coins instead. He scooped them up and dumped them into the passenger seat with deliberate lack of ceremony. “Keep the change, asshole.”

The driver’s snarling abuse followed him into the club. Loki yelled “fuck you!” and flipped him off as he vanished behind the doors where the harsh words melted away into the heavy bass that pulsed along through the walls and up from the expensive floors that glittered beneath a deep, moody hue. Little colored lights slid from blue to purple and back as he waved hurriedly to the cute new hire working coat check tonight and slipped into the long hallway that would lead him into the main floor. Pietro was at the end of it, a perpetually mischievous twinkle in his eye as he shifted and fidgeted beneath his security uniform. Despite looking like a stiff breeze might knock him sideways, Loki had seen the man flatten his sister’s heavyweight ex without breaking a sweat and had never questioned him since. He gave the blonde a harried look as he passed and wove through the early bird customers already on the floor, most of whom he recognized and a couple he didn’t. 

His heart was pounding wildly in his chest as he reached the locker rooms, ramping his anxiety up into the damn roof and making him a little clumsy as he whirled past Wanda and Fandral to dump his things in front of an empty space along the vanity.

“Eyyy, there he is!” Wanda crowed, her mouth open as she leaned in a couple inches from the mirror and ran a mascara wand through her heavy lashes. “You okay? You’re fucking late.”

Loki made an unintentionally squeaky noise through his nose as he dug through his bag, his brain short-circuiting and making him forget what he was even looking for. Fandral growled disapprovingly from where he was standing, one lean, muscular leg hiked up near his shoulder as he laced up a pair of glittery _Doc Marten’s_.

“Fandraaaaal,” Wanda’s voice wavered on the air in a whine.

“Yeah, I know.” 

Fandral’s reedy hands landed on his shoulders, weighing him down and slowing his movements. It wasn’t the first time Loki was reminded why his friend was such a successful stripper, he exuded the kind of energy that said “fuck me” even when he wasn’t trying. It activated a rage switch in Loki, for what it was worth. He glared at the other man in the mirror.

“Relax, Laufeyson” the blonde said soothingly, squeezing his muscles a couple times. “Clint hasn’t even finished his first set and we have a couple new girls on the floor. You’re fine.”

“I know,” Loki said grumpily, peering into his bag and looking for...something. _What the hell was he looking for?_

A new voice entered from his left. “Ooh, I didn’t know you were showing up tonight, Laufeyson.”

“He’s all kinds of frazzled tonight, mom,” Wanda said, pointing a long red nail in Loki’s direction. “You gotta sort him out.”

Natasha was the house mom and the most irreplaceable person both at the club and in his personal life. She was the kind of person who kept everybody in line but was also the first person you wanted to talk to in a crisis or if you needed an opinion on a pair of shoes. Her energy was reassuring, competent, no-nonsense, and Loki had never worked under anybody better.

“Help me,” he whined, jiggling a leg like a child throwing a tantrum. He knew he was being needy, but he couldn’t seem to pull it together tonight. 

“They’re looking for you,” Nat said to Fandral pointedly, jerking a thumb towards the door.

Fandral gave Loki a friendly smack on the ass, kissed Nat on the cheek, and left to go check in on the floor. Wanda hopped up to sit on the vanity and observe her first meltdown of the night, slinging a shapely leg over another, her pleasers glittering under the bright lights. There was nobody on the planet who knew more drama than Wanda Maximoff, or Scarlet as her customers knew her. She may have looked like a doll, but she had the kinds of receipts on her phone that could shatter entire communities and destroy planets. 

Natasha was much more helpful than Wanda, her purposeful stride brought her to his side and she sat him down in a chair with quick, firm pressure from her palms. 

“Fix your face first. Foundation, highlight, mascara.” She handed him each item, magically managing to find them in the disaster that was the inside of his work bag. He took them and felt his nerves begin to calm as she gave him clear instructions. 

“Why are you all worked up tonight anyway?” Nat asked, pulling out a couple outfits and looking at them with a critical eye.

“It’s been a day,” Loki muttered, dabbing at his face with a foundation sponge. “And the cab driver fucking doubled my fare because I tripped getting out of the damn speeder.” 

“Damn, you are a mess today,” Wanda commented. 

Loki made a face. “I should have just taken the day off, I don’t know if I can handle the garbage tonight.”

“Go home,” Wanda suggested. “It’s not like you’re hurting for a paycheck. Don’t worry, I’ll pick up the slack.” She clacked her nails together, grabbing at invisible cash.

“Hey, you back off, you make just as much as I do, I don’t need you creeping in on my clients,” Loki scoffed, waving his highlighter brush through the air and scattering tiny particles of glitter.

Wanda laughed. “Offer stands.”

She swept carefully curled hair over her shoulder and slid off the counter in all her leggy, curvy glory. She always looked good, but this was one of her best looks in Loki’s opinion. It was a red leather corset with shimmery, translucent tights, and a lacy red bra to complete the look. Paired with her deep brown eyes and cascades of long, brown hair it was extremely eye-catching. 

Natasha reappeared next to him as Wanda sauntered from the room. “Okay, what do you need, do you need help with your hair?”

“Yes, please,” Loki said in a small voice, making his eyes extra round at her in the mirror and poking his lip out to look extra pathetic. She always made his hair look magical in a way he could never achieve on his own. 

“My god, you’re a needy bastard,” said Natasha, but she gave him a reassuring smile and dropped a fond kiss on top of his head all the same.

*

Across town, somebody else was not having the best day either. Maybe there was something in the air—barometric pressure, maybe? Or perhaps it was the stars working their chaos out there beyond the thinning atmosphere. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities Thor was open to considering. He was generally an optimistic guy when it came to forces of the universe, but so far he hadn’t found anything to quite fit his needs. This week was making him wish he believed in _something_ that could explain the streak of shit luck he was having. At least then he wouldn’t have to deal with the unfortunate truth of the matter that it was probably just him.

“—and of course, that’s when I had to turn him down. I try not to be cocky, but I am worth so much more than they were offering me and—”

The man across the table continued to blather on and Thor tried desperately to maintain his control over the carefully arranged expression he’d adopted fifteen minutes ago. He felt his muscles disobey him spectacularly. If he had to guess, he would assume his face was somewhere between disgust and a boredom so profound it verged on contempt. His date didn’t seem to notice. 

At least his luck was consistent. 

By the time they said goodnight, Thor was practically squirming beneath his t-shirt and he wasn’t certain if it was due to the sheer level of incompatibility between himself and the other man, or if it was simply a deep-seated self-loathing at the fact that this was his fifth failed date in a month. 

Try dating, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. 

The tiny suns had long since faded behind the gritty skyline of the city, leaving him in the bone-deep, scorching heat that baked into the streets during the day and never fully left them at night. He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked down the sidewalk, more to seem like he had something to do than for any explicit purpose. The name of his date had already faded from his mind, leaving room for an insidious loneliness to creep back in. 

Meeting people in the city was tough. He’d come to this planet with a handful of coins and an abundance of determination. He knew starting a new life wouldn’t be easy alone, but he’d expected it to at least be rewarding in some aspect. Three years into the endeavor and he was resorting to a dating app to manufacture the human interaction he couldn’t seem to conjure up organically. The worst part of it was he wasn’t even using it to get laid anymore, and that was, in his opinion, the ultimate depths of pathetic. 

It was definitely him, then.

Around him the shops began to light up, neon signs flickering to life and inviting potential customers in. One in particular caught his eye. He only hesitated for a moment before reaching out and firmly grasping the door handle, allowing the heavy scent of lilies and tanning lotion to pull him inside. 

He was no stranger to strip clubs, having frequented one much closer to his tiny apartment during his first year in the city. The appeal had slowly tapered off as his mechanic business took off and he got busier, but he had always been drawn to the idea of paying somebody to be nice to him for an hour. After this many failed dates, he deserved something with low stakes.

He was ushered inside by a sly looking bodyguard who sat him near the main stage at a little table with silver glitter flecked through it that caught the light with each pass of the colored lights. When the waitress brought him an overpriced gin with some kind of local additive he had never tried, he tipped her generously and felt the anxiety begin to leave his shoulders. The girl on the pole at the moment was climbing over it like it was an extension of herself, suspending herself midair in beautiful poses that seemed impossible. Her hair was a long sheet of straight black that rippled like a waterfall almost in slow motion as she moved. 

Thor tipped her as well and took a sip of the drink. It was interesting, a little sharp on the tongue but cool along his throat until it settled in his stomach and began to warm him from the inside out. He let his eyes slide around the room as the liquor began to relax him. The club was fairly busy for a weeknight, full of customers that were mostly being doted on by various glimmering entertainers. 

It didn’t take long for somebody to find him, and even less time to convince him he needed to spend enough to be taken back to a champagne room. He hadn’t known what he was looking for when he walked into the club, but as he followed the beautiful man with gently defined muscles across his back and soft, dark curls that brushed the edges of a massive snake tattoo that coiled across his entire body, he was certain this was what he was looking for. 

A muted haze settled across his brain. Unsure of whether or not it was the booze or the pounding music, he let the dancer’s cool fingers slip between his own and lead him from the floor.

*

Loki stuck his tongue out surreptitiously at Wanda as he led his first client back. She couldn’t flip him off from the stage, but he saw it in her face anyway. Normally he didn’t snag somebody for a champagne room this early in the night, but he was a little frazzled and working the floor sounded like hell tonight. It didn’t take him long to find the big, sad-looking blonde sitting by himself at the edge of the stage, politely watching Wanda work but with the detached kind of glaze on his face that told Loki everything he needed to know. A quick couple words, a flirty smile, and a purposeful touch on the arm and Loki had him on the line.

The door clicked shut and a dark fog unfurled through the glass, lazily obscuring most of the hallway from view. He pivoted gracefully on one toe.

“Alright gorgeous, rules before playtime. Menu is here,” he passed a small, laminated piece of paper covered in glitter from the table to the big blonde on the couch in front of him—Thor, he remembered. “The room is a flat fee, anything off the menu is extra, if you don’t see your particular fetish listed you’re welcome to request off-menu services but I do not have to agree.”

Across from him Thor chuckled and leaned forward to place the menu neatly back on the table. 

“Anything else, sir?”

Loki snorted. “We have a no-touch policy and that includes my ass, my face, and definitely not my hair. I don’t do kissing, either.” He plucked the chilling champagne from the ice bucket and popped the cork without looking. “And don’t call me sir.”

“Fair enough.”

The champagne fizzed gently as he filled two flutes and placed the bottle back on ice, feeling something in the room was off. A surreptitious glance at the thermostat told him it wasn’t the temperature, which meant it had to be the energy Thor was bringing in. Upon second glance under different lighting, he had to admit he wasn’t entirely sure he’d read him correctly the first time around. He was big and broad like a labrador with similar energy, and the kind of handsome many might jump off cliffs for if he only had the decency to open his pretty mouth and ask, Loki included. Normally he wouldn’t bother reading too much into a client because he didn’t need to, but Thor intrigued him. A little bit. 

“So, what’s it gonna be, beautiful?” he asked, holding out the flute and clinking his own against it as Thor took it from him. “If you’re not sure, I can give you the best damn strip tease you will ever see.” He drew out each word, letting it hang off the tip of his tongue until it dropped into the heavy air around them. 

Thor sighed deeply and shook his head. “You can cut all the extraneous shit out.”

It wasn’t often a client surprised him, but it did happen. Loki swallowed his surprise, albeit pleasant surprise, and affected a soft smile instead.

“I can multitask if you’re not feeling super spendy tonight. Strip tease comes with the room, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I didn’t ask for a strip tease,” Thor leaned forward and looked him dead in the eye. “And I’ll fuckin’ pay you extra to drop the pet names—never liked that shit.”

“What if I just called you an asshole?” 

A deep chuckle. “Guess I earned that one, didn’t I?”

Loki felt something like a smile creep onto his face despite himself. “Guess you did. What else do you want?”

“I want you to talk to me about something interesting,” Thor said, waving a heavy hand and taking a good mouthful of champagne. “I had a long day, struck out on my fifth date in a row, and I just need somebody to be fucking interesting for one goddamn day in my life. Can you swing that?”

“Look, don’t insult me just because you have bad taste,” Loki said primly, settling on the couch across from his now extremely interesting client and draping his legs against the velvet just so. “Tell me about this shitty fifth date.”

Thor eyed him as if he were still deciding whether it would be worth it to vent to a stranger. He had blue eyes that deepened in color under the dark lighting of the room making them wildly captivating and a little strange. Loki couldn’t tear his own away. 

“It probably sucked because of me.”

“A distinct possibility.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t even get a word in edgewise, how the hell could it have been me?” Thor scoffed darkly, his eyebrows furrowing deeper into his brow. “It was like having a one-sided conversation with a sheet of drywall.”

“Nice,” said Loki and bit his lip to keep from smiling at his client’s expense. “That’s what everybody wants from a first date. You’re telling me this person was interesting enough at some point for you to agree to a date?”

“Yes,” Thor started and then his shoulders did a thing where they slid forward and down in a dejected little motion. “Okay maybe not, his profile was cute and he matched with me. I may not have bothered to read anything about him.”

Loki burst out laughing. He reigned it in a little from his natural laugh—which was a less marketable and more forceful sound—to something a little more suited for fantasy, but the amusement was still genuine. “Did you even get any—” he made a crude gesture with his hand and a practiced tongue movement. 

Thor’s cheeks flushed a deep crimson. “I actually wasn’t there for that. Although I wouldn’t have minded.”

“Wait, so you’re telling me you’re using a dating app to find...friends?” Loki asked carefully, swirling the champagne around in his glass. It clung delicately to the edges of the fragile flute.

“Human connection,” Thor corrected, but resignedly so like he’d gotten into the habit of correcting others but no longer believed it himself.

“Damn, all work and no play,” said Loki sympathetically. “Are you sure you don’t still want that strip tease?”

“Are you just trying to get tips out of me?” asked Thor shrewdly.

“What, feeling swindled?” Loki asked, raising a brow lightly, seeing little to no point to maintaining a facade when Thor seemed determined to keep things strictly realistic. “Or did you walk in here thinking you’d find a boyfriend? I do provide a boyfriend experience.”

“Oh, piss off.”

Loki grinned. He was taking a bit of a calculated risk here by acting like a bit of a shit, despite being well-versed in reading into what a customer’s wants and needs were. Thor’s effortlessly pathetic front was grating and, if he were being frank, just plain sad, but to Loki’s own eternal self-loathing Thor was precisely the kind of sad fuck Loki would have pounced on outside of work given the chance and a night off. Wanda always said he liked them a little rough.

Thor was watching him process, leaning back with one massive arm slung over the back of the couch, the few nerves the champagne hadn’t washed away still lingering in the way his navy irises flicked away from him every couple seconds and his knees, though spread wide, weaved languidly back and forth. Loki took pity on him then. It was his job to make people comfortable and he was nothing if not an expert. 

“Well, so far I know you’re a giant asshole that takes people on terrible dates,” he said, tilting his head and allowing the curls Natasha had carefully done earlier to tumble from his shoulders and off to one side. It was always an eye-catching move and he was rewarded with Thor’s gaze following it along his collar bone. He smiled. “What else is there to know about Thor Odinson?”

Thor’s teeth flashed and Loki took another sip of champagne.

*

Thor thought about it constantly.

He thought about it when he was brushing his teeth. He thought about it when he was working on yet another speeder. He thought about it when he was drifting off to sleep at night and it put a smile at the corners of his mouth just as he slipped into nothingness. 

It was the best “date” he’d been on, quite possibly in the history of ever and it hadn’t even been a date. Of course his memory didn’t serve as well as it once had; all he knew was that—after three abysmal, grueling years of grinding day after day and acquiring what was now a permanent sunburn-turned-tan that would inevitably become a sunburn-turned-tan-turned-multiple-skin-cancer-spots before too long—he finally felt alive. And to think, it had been with a man who went by the name of _Viper_. 

He should probably get a fucking grip.

“Dude, what the fuck are you doing under there?”

He let out a startled grunt and nearly dropped the multi-pronged tool he was holding on his face. He’d been in the middle of fiddling with the oil pan on a newer model of the X-84 Speedster and they’d somehow managed to make it even more difficult to access than previous models. He turned his head to the side just in time, squeezing his eyes shut as the blunted handle glanced off his cheek and bounced onto the ground with a clatter. 

“Fuck!”

“Oh shit.”

He shoved himself out from beneath the vehicle, hard. The hoverpad glided soundlessly over the concrete anyway and he found himself frowning grouchily at a familiar face. 

“What the hell, Wilson?” he asked. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Sam Wilson raised a brow. He was a muscular guy who had the kind of face that made strangers feel comfortable telling him almost anything despite the fact he literally never asked them to. Thor knew exactly three things for certain about him, 1) he was a tattoo artist, 2) he wore birkenstocks with socks in the winter, and 3) you would never see the man run. He wasn’t wearing socks and sandals today, though. A pair of chopsticks rested between his fingers and he was wielding them deftly over a little metal pan of sushi resting in the flat of his other palm.

“To be honest, I thought you might already be dead,” said Sam through a mouthful of rice and fish. “You weren’t moving and I’ve been standing here for half my damn lunch break.”

“The fuck you have been—hey, is that from Chris’ place?” Thor asked, eyeing the food. 

“Absolutely not.”

“Can I have one?”

Sam shook his head and stepped away. “You stay over there, you fucking vacuum. I share one of these with you and suddenly I’ll have nothing left.”

“Just one, I promise!”

“I have a half sleeve to finish up today!” Sam exclaimed, shooing him away with a wave of his chopsticks. “I need my energy. Go get your own.”

“Okay, okay,” Thor raised his hands in surrender. “Cheapskate.”

Sam’s eyes glinted merrily. There was a set of mechanical clicks and whirrs from behind them and a personal assistant droid came to life. 

“Can I provide assistance, sir?” 

Thor waved it off. “Nah, I’m good, Taz. Oh no, wait, actually—”

Sam finished his lunch in happy silence as Thor gave the droid instructions and ushered it out the front door of the shop. He stood there in the heat of the afternoon sun pouring in through the door that he had propped up with a vintage hubcap from the 90’s when the combustion engine on wheels was still the most popular means of transportation. PA droids were usually helpful in very specific instances and a mechanic shop was not one of them, but Thor liked the company and he had a soft spot for the limited robots. He smiled as Taz stuttered along down the street and made a mental note to work on the unit’s mobility to make it more efficient on petty errands like his late lunch. 

“Where’s Steve?” asked Sam as he turned back around and frowned at the speeder he’d been working on. 

“No idea.”

“Isn’t he employed here?”

“Sometimes.”

“Hell, maybe I should have applied for a job here when I had the chance.”

“Maybe,” Thor chuckled and then trailed off, his brain veering off course for the millionth time that day. “Hey, how do you know if a guy likes you?”

He regretted it almost as soon as the words left his lips. They were friends, sure, but in the way coworkers or neighbors are friends, not in the “give life advice” kind of way. Sam looked at him a bit nonplussed, but shoved the last bit of sushi into his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully, swallowing before opening his mouth. 

“You two banged yet?”

“What? No.”

“Well, if he’s still around when he’s not getting any that’s a good sign. Other than that I think it’s a gut-feeling thing. You just know.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Sam shrugged. “Exactly what I said. When you know, you know.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Ask anybody, they’ll say the same thing,” Sam checked his watch and yawned deeply. “Alright, my client is probably back and I gotta get out of there before the end of the day.”

“Trying to rush through sessions or what?”

“Kinda, she’s Eridanian. Tough skin and commuting in from offworld—trying to get it done in as few sessions as possible.”

“Damn, don’t you have to like—” Thor hesitated uncertainly. “Basically tattoo them twice?”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “A tattooed Eridanian is a committed Eridanian.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, but she sits really well so it’s all good. Anyway. See ya.”

Thor watched his friend melt into the dusty sunlight with a casual wave, leaving him there in the shop to feel unsettled and confused. Sam’s shop was in the building adjacent, so he was in and out of the garage multiple times most days. 

Thor picked up the multi-pronged tool he’d dropped earlier and flopped back onto the hoverpad to work. Taz showed up later with his food and left it on the counter for him and then bustled round the shop doing little tasks. The sun continued to sink and the amber light spilling over the threshold shrank until Taz activated the lights in the shop. They hummed with inefficiency. Thor had meant to begin replacing them with better lighting, but had yet to get around to it.

By the time he emerged from the dust and oil of the X-84 it was purring like new and he was famished and ready for a shower. He took one look at the cold food he’d had Taz bring earlier and moved it to the fridge for whenever he inevitably forgot lunch again. The shop was dark as he plugged Taz in for the night and shut down the computer. He was fumbling with the keys to lock up and head home when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

“Yo, Steve, I didn’t realize you weren’t coming in today,” he said by way of greeting, awkwardly pressing it to his ear as he resumed looking for the correct key.

“You didn’t get my reminder did you?”

The keys slipped in his hands and he crouched quickly to catch them before they hit the ground, nearly losing the phone again. “A wha—reminder for what?”

A sigh on the other end. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. It was in the back fridge on a burrito from yesterday, but you probably didn’t even eat today, did you?”

“No. I mean, yes, but wait did you have today off?”

Steve laughed deeply. “Thor, I cleared this with you last month and reminded you Monday. Remember? Anniversary?”

“Oh fuck. Yeah, yeah, of course,” Thor vaguely remembered his friend talking about taking his longtime boyfriend out for their anniversary. “How did it go?”

“Still going actually! We wanted to see if you wanted to go out with us!”

Thor dropped into the low cockpit of his speeder. It bobbed under his weight as he brought the clear bubble shield up and around to seal. “Yeah, I’m not third wheeling on your anniversary because you feel bad for me. I’ll survive.”

“And you’re not going home to watch reruns of shows from the late 2000’s and eat leftovers that are going bad,” Steve said flatly. “I forbid it.”

He heard Bucky’s voice in the background saying, “He does what?”

“That was one time.” Not strictly true.

The speeder chirruped softly at him as it powered up and he typed in the sequence that would take him home. It rose another foot or so into the air and glided into the lazy night traffic. On the other end of the line he could hear a slight squabble happening and then Bucky had the phone. 

“Thor, if you don’t come with us, so help me god, I will hunt you for sport.”

“You?” Thor snorted. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Sure about that?”

Thor chewed his lip and watched a stoplight pass overhead, remembering that Bucky’s favorite pastime was competitive pistol shooting, of all things. “Okay, fine. But I need to shower and change. Meet you in half an hour?”

“Hell yeah.”

And that’s how he ended up here, back at Bifrost. The strip club was busy tonight and Thor found himself hard-pressed to keep from scanning the room for the pale one with the snake tattoo. Instead, he focused strongly on maintaining a conversation with his friends. It was wild, he knew Bucky was a retired stripper, but he never connected the dots between his profession and the actual club he’d worked at and apparently it had been the Bifrost.

“What the hell are you doing here, you’re not a client,” a girl in a black corset and red tights approached the table, grinning at Bucky. She had a sheet of immaculate curls that cascaded down her back and a set of nails that looked like they were as annoying as they were impractical. Bucky stood to give her a hug and catch up. 

“So, was this your idea or his?” Thor leaned in to ask Steve over the music. 

“His. We come every year to say hello!”

Steve was lounging back with his drink, smiling happily at his boyfriend in a stupid, lovesick kind of way that made Thor unsure whether he was going to be sick or just jealous. Maybe he was better off looking for the big snake tattoo after all. 

“Hey, jackass, come here I want to introduce you to somebody!” 

Steve left him there and he was suddenly aware of just how badly he wanted to find Viper before his friends got back. He’d stopped coming with them as their pity date for the past two years and was remembering why he stopped. It wasn’t fair to say that, of course, Steve and Bucky were the most genuine people he’d ever had the misfortune to stumble upon and he both loved and hated them for it. If they said they wanted him along because they wanted him along, it was the stone-cold truth no matter how he felt about it. Maybe he just shouldn’t be left to his own devices over a glass of gin.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

It was amazing, nobody had ever accused him of having a great memory, but he didn’t even need to look to know whose voice it was. His heart beat to a distinctly different rhythm when he tilted his head back to see Viper’s sharply angled face looming over him, thick eyelashes casting long shadows across his cheekbones, a supercilious slant to his proud shoulders. 

“Did you strike out on date six?”

“I should never have told you that,” Thor grumbled. 

“I think you missed me,” said Viper.

“Yeah, don’t flatter yourself,” Thor said dryly, but he was smiling as he took another good swallow of his drink.

Viper looked good. It wasn’t lost on him how perfectly the emerald lingerie set sat against his skin, skimming over his hips and along his ribcage like it was custom work. The scent of pine lingered in the air as he moved and Thor’s eyes tracked him like they were made to.

“Either way you’re the loser in this situation,” Viper pointed out, coming to a crouch beside his seat and looking at him with a tilt to his head. “And that’s just sad. You might just have to pay for another session with me to make up for it.”

Thor laughed humorlessly, torn between dragging the man to the back himself and playing the standoffish jerk. “Yeah. Yeah, I just might.”

Viper’s eyes shimmered wickedly in the dim lights and he rose to his feet. “Well, come on then, genius. You’re wasting time.”

*

“So, you’re in like with this guy.”

Loki paid the barista at the counter and moved down the line as he felt his lip curl in disdain. It was midmorning and he was not in the mood to be vertical, let alone in public around other people, and least of all with Wanda who didn’t generally give one fuck about how he felt about crowds of people or mornings.

“Don’t say “in like,” you know I hate it. And no, I’m not, I’d sooner shoot myself in the foot with a railgun.”

“A railgun, huh?” asked Wanda casually. “Can you get access to one of those? No particular reason.”

“Ha, for you? Not on your life,” Loki answered, bouncing his leg impatiently even though he had nothing else to do today but go back home and go to sleep. He asked her, “what did you order?”

“Iced americano, sugar free raspberry.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me?”

“No, Loki,” Wanda sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then folded the arm back in against her chest. “Because you _say_ americano with no room to sound like a badass, but you paid the barista to make it into whatever the fuck sugary thing you made up that one time. I can’t say it out loud or I’ll vomit on your shoes.”

Loki looked down at her, impressed. “Tell anyone else and I will end you, but I’ve been needing a new pair of shoes. Go on.”

Wanda nodded at the barista as he called out their drinks and pushed Loki’s into his chest. “No thanks. So, tell me about this big blonde boy of yours you keep hauling into the back room to do _unspeakable_ things with.”

She said ‘unspeakable’ with a fluttery little exhale of breath, making a face and letting her eyes roll back into her head in a mockery of ecstasy. Loki shoved her good-naturedly up the stairs as she continued to make breathy noises, causing a couple of customers to stare. The patio was bright outside, Loki flicked his sunglasses down onto his nose and they parked at a pair of seats that overlooked the bustling streets below.

“Spit it out, Laufeyson, I don’t have all day.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going in tonight?”

“I’m not.”

“Sooo, then?”

“It’s called a life, dipshit. I have to go fix my shit at the courthouse at two for that incident with the limo driver back in March.”

“Wait, you’re not done with that yet?”

She snorted loudly. “Since when have the courts ever worked that fast—what world are you living in?”

“Not yours, apparently.”

Wanda’s eyebrow seemed to shrug what her shoulders didn’t. “Anyway, I have to meet up with that horror show of a driver and try to prove that it wasn’t my fault.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but they don’t know that,” she said.

“Maybe you should just learn to drive for real.”

“Fuck no, too much time. And I’m a good driver.”

“Are you, though?”

“Shut up,” she smacked him, hard. “Now stop stalling and give me the dirty details!”

“Uuuugh, _fine._ ” Loki pushed his fingers up under his glasses to rub at his eyes and then dragged them down his face. “I mean, there’s not a whole lot to tell.”

“Uh-huh,” Wanda took a sip of her drink and raised perfectly shaped brows, unconvinced. “How many times has he paid for a room?”

Loki thought about it, tallying it up on his fingers. The rings he was wearing clinked gently with the movement. “Six? So far?”

Wanda sent a low whistle past her lips. “I love a dedicated one. What’s he like? Is he kinky? He’s not boring is he? Oh god, he’s really hot, he could definitely be boring.”

“That’s just it, he doesn’t even look at the menu, he just wants me to talk to him,” Loki said, feeling an infuriatingly silly grin pull at his lips. He tamped it down.

“Oh honey,” Wanda’s face took on a whole new kind of expression that Loki wasn’t quite sure how to interpret. “That’s dangerous territory,” she took her straw into her mouth but continued to talk around it. “So, what’s his deal? Divorced? Widowed?”

At this point, Loki was pretty good at figuring out why people came to see him whether they chose to disclose it or not. Six visits was more than enough time for him to get a solid read on a guy and his guess was Thor was just extremely lonely. He didn’t necessarily feel bad for him, he wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for the thousands of lonely life forms he saw per year and he certainly never entertained the ones who fancied themselves in love with him, but he had to admit there was a natural attraction with Thor and he was working overtime to ignore it.

“Unlucky, I guess?” he said in answer to Wanda’s question. “I dunno.”

“Just unlucky, huh? You sure you’re not into this one?” she prodded none too gently, her pouty lips turning down just slightly at the corners. “You’re doing that thing you do.”

“What thing? I don’t have a thing.”

“Sure you do,” said Wanda. “And you always try to blow it off after pretending like you don’t give a shit. Give it to me straight, are you into him?”

Loki took his time with the question and a long sip from his drink, letting the sugar dance around his tongue until it was rendered a nearly inedible lukewarm sludge in his mouth. He swallowed deliberately, sniffed, and pushed his sunglasses farther up his nose, playing hide-and-seek with the unwanted emotions Wanda had brought to the front of his brain. 

Among many things he struggled with but never bothered to deal with was the concept of intimacy, or rather his ability to fall irreparably in love with the idea of pretty much anybody. Not that he ever did anything about it, he couldn’t, but it was a tired cycle he knew well. It usually followed a pattern that involved fantasizing like a lovesick teenager until he was very nearly writing their name in hearts on sticky notes, followed by a period of disillusionment prompted by nothing, and coming to a grand conclusion when he settled into disaffected contempt and finally ghosted them. All of this he got away with while the subject of his affections remained blissfully unaware until suddenly he wasn’t there anymore.

He’d gone through this with enough clients to know the warning signs, but that didn’t mean he could do anything about it. Generally he ascribed to the church of whiteknuckling that shit until he was back to his usual, disinterested self. All that to say, he wasn’t sure if he genuinely liked Thor or if he was just falling into the trap of the same fantasy he was selling to him. His heart would swear up and down it was the former, but his bets were on the latter and he wasn’t about to waste time trying to reconcile the two.

“He’s just another client, Wanda,” he said. 

She looked at him over the top of her glasses and the silence was damning enough. 

“Fuck,” he said.

*

“Aliens?”

“Are you kidding me? A classic.”

“Hell yeah it is, I always wanted to be Vasquez when I was a kid.”

“Yeah, I bet you did,” Loki laughed and took the proffered joint from Thor’s calloused fingers and brought it to his lips. He shared things all the time with coworkers and friends, but sharing with Thor felt like a secret that sat right beneath his sternum and made him feel light as a feather. Loki never had any issues with self-esteem, he knew he was all that and a bag of chips, but Thor, for all his roughness and lack of propriety made him feel like he was flying, he was just so easy to be around and the conversation came so naturally. It was fucking disgusting.

But he couldn’t stop grinning.

They were outside tonight. Thor had him swipe for two hours worth of his time right off the bat and as it turned out neither one of them were feeling the cramped champagne room. He’d smuggled Thor through the locker room, kicked off his heels for a pair of Fandral’s shimmery _Doc’s_ , and then dodged Natasha’s watchful eye to slip out the back door. He didn’t think she would care once she knew they were on paid time, but he’d just as soon not find out or deal with it later.

It was warm out, but he still shrugged neatly beneath the wide, roomy shoulders of Thor’s beaten leather mechanic’s jacket when he offered it. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Thor only wore a beater underneath it, which normally would have offended him deeply, but Thor’s arms could only be described as godly and there was really no other legal option for him to wear so Loki let it slide. Just this once though and mostly because he couldn’t stop staring at those fucking triceps, jesus…

He took another drag and passed it back to Thor.

“So what does a guy like you do, exactly?”

Thor turned a skeptical brow on him through a stream of smoke. “You’re the one wearing the jacket, genius.” 

Loki pulled the lapel over and twisted it so the embroidery was readable. “What, a mechanic? You’re telling me that fixing speeders gets you the kind of cash to be coming in here as often as you do? Bullshit. What’s your side hustle?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Bullshit.”

Thor’s laugh was deep and warm. “What can I say, three years of work and not much else gives a guy some spending money.” He looked down with a roguish smile and Loki caught his breath at it. “Sorry. Hardly exciting.”

“Three years, huh? Where’s home for you?” asked Loki.

Thor grimaced. “The Alpha Centauri system.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. That’s why I came here—thought it would be better.”

“And is it?”

Thor thought on it a moment. “Well, it’s certainly not worse.”

Loki nodded. This system wasn’t exactly top shelf as far as planetary systems went, but it wasn’t the worst either. They were silent for a bit after that. Loki was glad for the jacket even with the heat from the day still rising from the concrete. It was nice, he mused, to be out here with Thor, chatting and talking about nothing and everything—he could almost forget he was working. 

Almost. The problem was that he _wanted_ to forget and he _couldn’t_ and it was starting to become a fucking buzzkill.

“Hey, how much do you trust me?” Thor asked, stamping out the spent joint on the ground and shoving his hands into his pockets. 

“That depends,” Loki looked up at him through the final stream of smoke he was releasing through his nostrils. “Are we talking like you want to borrow my shoes or you want me to deliver an unknown package somewhere in the dead of night and not ask questions?”

“What? No, nothing like that. I was thinking since we seem kind of tired of the _ambiance_ here,” he said the word haltingly, like he was trying it out for the first time. “I was wondering if you’d let me take you somewhere else?”

Loki laughed casually even as his heart leapt into his throat and made it sound all pitchy. “What like a date?”

“Doesn’t have to be.”

“Aren’t you the asshole who takes people on terrible dates?” Loki squinted up at him in feigned suspicion, even though he already knew what his answer was before the words had finished coming out of Thor’s mouth. 

“I guess you’ll have to find out. And hey, if I screw up and it’s terrible, you’ll get paid either way,” said Thor. 

“Way to sell it, how could I possibly say no,” said Loki 

Thor looked amused. “How, indeed.”

Loki leaned back against the wall and their shoulders touched, pressing together and sending a thrill along his skin and back up through his midline with an electrifying little jerk. 

“Yeah, what the hell.”

Thor’s face split into a dazzling grin. “Great.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a oneshot and then it got too long, so I had to cut it in half. 
> 
> Chapter two up soonish.


	2. Chapter 2

*

Thor took them to the rooftop bar at the top of The Arctryx, a shiny skyscraper type building that he typically visited once a year during Christmas to see the city light up and enjoy an overpriced cocktail or beer that wasn’t worth the price but definitely worth the view.

He’d worn a pair of dark jeans, a shined up pair of boots, and a light blazer lined with heat tech that kept him from feeling like he was being slow-baked in an oven, despite the fact that this planet was, in fact, a fiery pit that never once stopped trying to roast them all alive. His "date" showed up in a slinky pair of black pants that were so dark they almost absorbed the light, and a very pretty, toned-down emerald green top that was translucent at a certain angle. His hair had been pulled up in a soft style that left half of it free to fall about his shoulders while the rest twisted effortlessly into a loose pile at the back of his head. 

It was nice. Like all the other times they’d been together over the last handful of weeks, the conversation was fun and easy, and he was, well—

“Everything!”

“But what does that _mean_ , Thor? It explains exactly zilch,” said Bucky sourly. “Null. Zip. Nada.”

“It means he’s so in love he doesn’t know left from right,” Steve explained calmly before bouncing his teeth off his metal straw and wincing before taking a long sip. “You would know.”

“Would I?”

“Fuck off.”

“GUYS.”

_“Sorry.”_

They said it in perfect unison and Thor nearly projectile vomited reflexively. 

“So what do I do? I really like this guy.”

Bucky hummed and exchanged a glance with Steve. “Well, that’s tricky. You know our job as strippers is to sell you a fantasy, right? Not to be a buzzkill, but we’re really good at it. Hell, I had clients proposing to me every week.”

“Wait, really?” asked Steve, intrigued. “You never told me that.”

Bucky flapped a hand impatiently. “Because it’s nothing. Everybody thinks strippers are in love with them. They want to whisk us away to a better life, they want to save us from our enslavement, or help us find some self-respect,” he said dramatically, bringing a hand up to his forehead and fainting backward into Steve’s arms who laughed and kissed him on the forehead. He sat back up and smoothed his hair before continuing. “Anyway. I recommend against proposing to your stripper friend. Coming from the other side, it’s not cute.”

“Who said anything about proposing?” asked Thor.

“I’m just saying it’s a bad idea to pursue him,” Bucky shrugged apologetically. “Unfortunately me and Steve love you, and if you get your heart broken, one of us is gonna have to end up in jail.” Steve nodded along with this statement casually, as if his partner hadn’t just implied homicide by their hands. “If it’s any consolation, it sounds like you definitely got your money’s worth?”

Thor groaned and tried very hard not to slump backward into the once-fluffy armchair and let it swallow him whole. He was fantastically unsuccessful. Bucky’s answer didn’t surprise him, he’d expected as much, it was just endlessly depressing to finally snuff out that pathetic little flame of hope he’d been nursing for the past couple weeks while he decided for himself if he was buying into the fantasy or not. 

“Sorry, pal,” said Steve sympathetically.

“Nah, it’s fine, I knew the answer already,” said Thor. “I just needed to hear it from somebody else.”

“We’re throwing a party next weekend, though,” Steve said brightly in a blatant attempt to cheer him up. “You should really close the shop early and come. Stay for the whole time this time. Val and Sif are bringing some new friends.”

“I’ll think about it,” Thor said morosely, playing with the frayed edge of the threadbare pink velvet on the arm of the chair.

“At least come with us to the races today,” Bucky said, checking his watch. “We have a box.”

Thor looked at his friend as he rose to his feet, making a face. “I can’t believe you buy season tickets to _pogglion racing._ ”

“You have a subscription to Motocross Weekly,” Steve pointed out, his eyebrows full of judgment. 

“Yeah, I fucking do. It’s old school. Classic. And the circuits are starting to gain momentum now, you know.”

“It’s _motocross!_ ” said Steve emphatically, windmilling his free arm. “At least pogglion racing involves some strategy. There’s skill involved! And they’re fast.”

“So fast,” Bucky agreed. 

“You’re both morons,” Thor said, heaving himself up. “Okay fine, convince me these races are something worth spending money on.”

Steve whooped and Bucky looped his arm through his and dragged them out to the curb to catch a cab.

*

Loki sniffed and pushed the thin, flimsy page of the magazine over, giving the contents a perfunctory once-over before rolling his eyes and sighing and tossing it to the side. It landed against his sliding door with an unsatisfactory slap and fell open to a page displaying the latest pop music sensation from the Eridani System.

The twin suns beat down on his feet and he snatched them back into the shade beneath the giant umbrella he’d made Clint haul up onto his deck at the beginning of the summer. At his last annual checkup he’d been told—threatened, if you asked him—that he urgently, desperately needed more vitamin D, but the supplement made him itchy and apparently the only other way to get that shit was to soak it up from the sun. His body would simply have to accept whatever vitamins it could get while he lay in the shade for an allotted thirty minutes in the morning and then again in the afternoon while the radio blasted and he spent half his time cursing at the fan for not being good enough. 

He glanced at his watch, flipped off the fan for good measure, and padded back into the blessed, _blessed_ cool of inside. On the white, marbled counter his phone was buzzing again. Wanda, undoubtedly. She’d been calling him nonstop for whatever goddamn reason and he refused to answer, partially because he couldn’t be fucked one way or the other about it and partially because he had an inkling about what conversation she wanted to have and he didn’t want to have it.

“Where have you been, I’m taking all your clients, you know,” he mimicked her sultry accent as he tossed his sun hat onto the tree that held three others of similar shape and stature and stripped off the oversized cutoff band tee he’d been wearing. He leant to turn on the shower still grumbling nonsense, “Like hell you are, girl, as if you could pull my clients anyway.”

He waved his hand to turn the radio up and stepped under the hot spray, singing along. He’d barely worked the shampoo into his hair when there was a loud pounding at the door. It was pretty fucking loud, too, considering it was coming through a reinforced door, the entry way, the hallway, and across the damn apartment through the bathroom door.

There was only one person who was that aggressive and that strong. He drew a deep breath and yelled, “Fucking, Wanda!” and listened to the way his voice bounced off the hardwood, metal, and concrete. His throat hurt a bit after that one. The pounding stopped for a second. Loki shrugged and stuck a hand out the curtain to turn the music up and ducked back under the water.

She’d resumed pounding on the door by the time he got out. He lit up a joint and turned the music up just a bit more, risking yet another noise complaint from the downstairs neighbors, and yanked on underwear and a shirt before walking to the door yelling “alright, I’m coming, fuck!” as he did. 

“Jesus, what is your problem?” he asked, flinging the door open and walking back inside. “Don’t you know I have neighbors? Fuck.”

“Nonsense! You know why? They could not hear my knocking over your music!” she yelled, shutting the door behind her and waving a hand in front of his controls to turn the music off. Her heels clacked across the black tile as she pursued him into the kitchen, her excessive bracelets jangling at her wrists. “Where’ve you been?”

“Busy,” he said shortly, opening the fridge and chewing on his lip as he decided on something to eat. “You want a sandwich?”

“No,” said Wanda. 

“Beer?”

“Sure. When are you coming back to work?”

“What do you mean when am I coming back to work? It’s not like we have a schedule,” he said. 

The fridge shut with a soft thud as he turned around with two light beers. Wanda leaned over the counter and plucked the joint from his lips and took a drag as he popped the caps off.

“You’re not fooling anybody, you know,” she said, hopping up onto a barstool. “He’s been around. Asked for you a couple times, but we haven’t seen him since.”

Loki’s heart rate shot through the roof but he managed a casual, “who?”

“Don’t play stupid, you know it doesn’t work on me,” said Wanda sharply, looking at him like he was the most pitiful life form she’d ever seen. When he didn’t answer she scoffed, “Coward.”

“What the fuck do you want me to say, Wanda?” he snapped.

“The truth,” she said firmly.

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“That you like him! You’ve been letting him spend money on you for weeks but you don’t have the balls to tell him you like him,” she downed half her beer in a single go and slammed the glass down on the counter. “Bad for business.”

“How is that bad for business?”

“We do not lie to our customers,” Wanda said, punctuating each syllable with a nail to the counter. “We sell them a fantasy, yes? They know this. This is what they pay for. But you? Pretending you are selling a fantasy when it is not? Lies. Bad for business.”

Loki stared at her angrily, heat burning in his chest with nowhere to go because she was right. This is why he hadn’t answered his fucking phone in the first place. 

“So, what do you suggest I do, then, smartass?” he asked, swiping the joint back and taking a rather aggressive pull into his lungs and holding it there. 

“You tell him the truth,” Wanda said simply. “Start with your real name. You cannot continue if you do not know each other’s names. You know his, he should know yours. It will even the playing field.”

He let his breath out in a controlled stream. “And what if I don’t want a relationship?”

“Who said anything about a relationship?” said Wanda scornfully. “You like him, but you cannot do anything about it until he is not paying you for your time, cannot fuck him on company time—”

“Who says I can’t fuck who I want on company time?”

“You like him too much to do that.”

She was right again. Loki floundered for words and came up empty. 

“Fine.” And then again, more emphatically. “ _Fine,_ I’ll talk to him. Fuck.”

Wanda smiled triumphantly. “Good. You do this and then you will come back to work and I will not have to deal with Fandral by myself.”

“You know what, just for barging into my house and interrupting my day with this bullshit, I’m going to leave you with Fandral for another two weeks,” said Loki.

*

Thor was going crazy.

He’d finally taken a day off for the first time in several months and now he didn’t know what to do with his arms and legs. At first he thought the idea of sitting on the couch and catching up on some shows sounded good, but he was up and out of that before he’d even finished a single episode. After that he managed to prep cook breakfast for the next two weeks, cleaned the apartment all the way down to scrubbing the baseboards until they were as good as they could possibly get for being a bit old and irreparably stained, did a few loads of laundry, and went to the gym. 

And it was still only early afternoon. 

“How do people do this?” he asked his empty living room, standing there with his hands on his hips at a loss for what to do. 

His hair was still a bit damp from his shower and he twisted it into a knot at the back of his head as he mulled over what options he had left. If he tried to go to work, Steve would fight him, so that was out. Motocross was on reruns on until next week when planetaries started up so that was also out.

A sharp knock at the door spared him the crushing weight of listing the sad few remaining things he could do with the rest of the day. A frown tracked its way across his face. Very few people knew where he lived and fewer still paid him visits in person and even then it was usually a call from the curb.

Fully ready to yell if it was a solicitor, he yanked the door open and found an imperious looking woman standing there instead. He blinked, momentarily lost for words. She had on a floaty, heat-friendly romper and a pair of heels so high they made him dizzy and her glasses were clear beneath the shade of the apartment stairwell. He could tell they were the expensive kind that unfurled a UVA protective shield depending on exposure to sunlight. Behind them her eyes were hazel, large and observant, but the kind that had seen enough things in life that not much surprised them anymore.

“Oh, holy shit,” she said in a heavy accent, giving him a brazen once-over. 

“Hi?” he managed to get out. 

But before he was able to say anything else, another voice floated up the stairwell and his heart rate sped up exponentially.

“—yo, if it was such a short errand, you could have left the air conditioning on and I could have just stayed—”

He knew that voice. _Hell._ Thor was stuck frantically deciding whether to slam the door or sprint across the room and jump out the window when none other than Viper stepped into view, rending him both unable to move and hideously aware that he looked like a bedraggled rat, fresh out of the gutter and shirtless. 

By contrast, Viper looked pretty and effortless in a big band tee with the front hem tucked almost carelessly into the waistband of his shorts, a pair of unlaced boots, and a pair of oversized sunglasses that looked hilariously out of place on his narrow, knifelike features. 

Viper came to a dead halt when he saw him, his green eyes widening behind his glasses, but instead of saying anything to him he rounded on the woman instantly. 

“Are you _fucking kidding me?_ ” he snarled. Then he paused, straightened, and turned stiffly to look at a fixed point over Thor’s shoulder, his cheeks a bright pink. 

“Thor,” he said shortly, then shoved his glasses farther up his nose and hurried down the stairs without another word.

Thor and the woman watched him go in shared silence, tracking him as he stalked across the lawn, a few curse words floating back up the stairwell towards them as he kicked a bottle out of his way. It bounced off a fence and rolled into the parking lot.

The woman sighed and swiveled on her heel and swept over him with the critical eye of an experienced museum curator. “I will talk to him. But you. You like him, yes?”

“I, uh—”

She rolled her eyes and said something in a language he didn’t need to understand to know it was a curse. She turned away, paused, and then turned back and flicked a card out between two very long, ornate fingernails. “If you have the balls.”

It had a number written in pen.

*

The wine made a distinctly unsexy gurgle as Loki poured a clinical shitton of it into a wine glass and carried it carefully out to the deck. The heat was almost bearable without the suns in the sky, but Loki flicked the fan on anyway and leaned over the flat railing, happy to watch the lights flicker in the city while he attempted to temporarily drown himself in pity.

The afternoon had taken him by surprise and left him reeling and embarrassed. He needed to have a talk with Wanda about springing serious shit on him like that—which she often did because she just didn’t think anything was that complicated—it was all so simple in her mind, if there was a problem, fix it. Loki had seen her do it in her own life, too. She could jump from point A to point B, glide through the messy human garbage that inevitably happened in between, and be on her stairs and smoking by dinner as if nothing had happened. It was just the way she was. And for as much as he loved her, Loki found himself actively plotting her murder at least two times a month because of who she was. He should probably call his therapist and start up sessions again. 

Homicide could wait, though, he had a much bigger problem on his hands.

He needed to figure out what to do about Thor. Just thinking about him made his stomach twist into knots. Seeing him this afternoon had been one hell of a shock, especially after he’d been purposefully avoiding him. Fucking Wanda. Sure, he could have been a little smoother when he realized what she had planned, but now it just kept playing in his head over and over again, burning a hole in his stomach and making him nauseated with embarrassment.

“Typical,” he muttered viciously, glaring down at the traffic below and hating it for its blatant and ongoing lack of concern for his problems. 

From inside he heard the telltale buzz of his phone on the counter and on instinct almost went and got it, but he stopped himself and turned back to the wine glass, choosing instead to glower at its contents for ignoring him like the traffic was.

The phone buzzed again. 

“Leave me alone!” he smacked his hand on the rail and left the wine there to think about what it had done while he stalked inside. He swiped to answer, “What the fuck do you want now?”

“Um, maybe I should call back?” said Thor on the other end. 

Loki felt the blood leave his face and he pressed the phone to his chest for a second as if it would erase what he’d just screamed into the receiver. 

_Son of a fuck._

He cleared his throat and brought the phone back up to his ear. “I am so sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

“Yeah, I gathered,” Thor laughed on the other end. It was warm and deep like he remembered, soothing a couple of the ragged nerves he had been grating over pavement the last couple weeks without it. “Is this a bad time?”

“No!” Loki said a little too quickly. “No, it’s okay. I’m just...surprised.”

“Your friend,” said Thor by way of explanation.

“That woman is going to be the death of me,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair and gripping at the roots.

“I probably should have texted first,” said Thor. “I wanted to say sorry for not saying anything this afternoon and I didn’t want you to think something was wrong.”

Loki snorted and leaned his elbows on the counter. “No, it wasn’t your fault. I’m the one who showed up unannounced, god, just fucking—it wasn’t my idea, you know.”

“Yeah, no, I got that,” said Thor. He paused. “So are we cool?”

“Yeah, we’re cool.” Loki chewed his lip and looked out at the wine glass that was silently judging him for what he was about to do next. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “Hey, are you free tonight?”

“For you I am,” said Thor. 

Loki’s heart fluttered when he heard the smile in Thor’s voice. He glanced at a little schedule he’d stuck on the fridge earlier that year.

“I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

*

Thor was jittery as fuck all. He’d swapped outfits at least three times, frowned at them in the small, dirty mirror until he hated them, and then ended up in the first one he’d put on anyway. Now he was outside, leaning against the metal siding of the apartment complex absorbing the ambient heat of the day into his shoulders and spine. His eyes slid to the road again. He had no idea what kind of vehicle Viper would be driving or if he’d even be driving at all, but he kept scanning the traffic like he had one.

A couple neighbors passed him, chattering loudly. He bounced his knee and clenched and unclenched his fists in an over abundance of nervous energy. Although he’d managed to remain cool on the phone, Viper asking him on a date had him wanting to yell from the rooftops at the top of his lungs and also, possibly vomit.

“Thor,” he muttered to himself. “Get a damn grip.”

Then again maybe it wasn’t a date? Viper had never expressly said the word “date,” maybe he was misinterpreting the whole thing and this was already headed for disaster before it began. Christ, he should never have walked into that strip club in the first place. 

He pulled a small tin from his pocket and pulled out a joint and lighter from it. The tip glowed orange and he sucked the smoke in with the anxiety he could practically smell on himself. If only he could stop neurotically checking his pits every twenty seconds maybe it wouldn’t be this way. 

A speeder he didn’t recognize pulled into the lot. Well, he didn’t recognize it as a resident vehicle per se, but he _did_ , however, know that it was an expertly kept classic speeder: a G23 Raptor with smooth suspension and a manual throttle. He would recognize the model anywhere—how had Viper kept this from him? Nerves momentarily forgotten, he dabbed the remaining half of his joint out and stored it back into the tin, letting his eyes sweep over the speeder in admiration.

Viper looked cute when the glass shield slid back and he got out and checked his reflection in the side mirror. He was wearing similar clothes to earlier, but his hair had tamed a little since and his easy curls ruffled slightly in the night breeze. 

Thor felt butterflies in his chest and took a deep breath. “Hey, what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” 

Viper straightened and tilted his head to the side, shadows shifting across his angular face in the inconsistent lighting from the complex. “I don’t know. Do you know anybody who’s struck out on like, a shitton of dates recently? I have this charity work that I do—”

“Fuck you,” said Thor, chortling and pushing off the wall to go meet him. “This yours?” he nodded at the speeder.

“For tonight.” 

“It’s fucking beautiful.”

“I thought you might like it.”

“Like it?” He ran the pads of his fingers lightly over the shiny chrome overlay of the hood and grinned. “I’ve been wanting to take one of these for a spin for years.”

“Good,” Viper checked his watch. “Fuck. Get in, we’re on a schedule. If you behave, I may even let you drive on the way back.”

“If I behave?” Thor asked, raising his eyebrows playfully as he moved to the passenger side and leapt lightly into the cockpit as Viper got in on the other side. The speeder rocked a little bit under the new weight. 

“Strap in, tough guy,” Viper grinned and his long fingers danced across the control pad. Then he dropped his hand to grasp the throttle, glanced over his shoulder and gunned it backward. 

Turned out Viper was quite the speed demon on the streets. Thor felt something like adrenaline rush his veins as they flew through the night, traffic lights zipping by overhead like strobe lights at the speeds they were going. The engine was in beautiful condition, he could barely hear it working as they shot down straightaways and took turns with ease. Whoever owned it had also custom fit racing harnesses onto the traditional cup seats and they hugged him to the seat as Viper deftly navigated. 

But for as thrilling as all of this was for him, his eyes kept straying to the man sitting in the pilot seat, his eyes hyper focused past the shield, flicking back and forth as he wove in and out of traffic, a little bit of a grin at the corner of his mouth. 

They pulled up to a little grate with a man in a pogglion racing shirt sitting on a rickety, uncomfortable looking stool holding a metal jar. Viper rolled the shield back and spoke a couple of words to the man, handed him some coins, and then eased forward into a wide, flat, sandy space full of at least a couple hundred other speeders of various shapes and sizes. 

“What is this?” he asked, sitting up as they glided along. “A drive in?”

“You said you liked classic movies, right?” said Viper.

They came to a gentle stop in a wide space just as a massive projector flickered to life several rows ahead of them. Dust swirled in the light from it as a couple trailers from classic movies began to roll. Emotion gripped at Thor’s chest. It had been a long time since anybody had treated him like this, since he’d had a genuine connection with anybody on this godforsaken planet. When Viper had stopped showing up at the club, he’d almost been happy to let it go—better to leave the fantasy untouched than to see it crushed by the cruel hand of reality.

But now? This simple acknowledgement that somebody had listened to him and understood something as simple as a passing interest was almost too much. 

“Want to see something cool?” Viper asked, his eyes sparking with excitement.

Before Thor could respond, he’d punched in a sequence on the dashboard and suddenly the entire interior of the speeder was moving, shifting, and receding into itself until they were leaning back in a perfectly smoothed, open cockpit. 

“Damn, Viper,” he breathed. 

Viper propped himself up on one elbow, a satisfied smile playing at his lips. “It’s Loki, actually.”

“What?”

“My name, dipshit. It’s Loki.”

It was a good name. Thor liked it. It was odd, a little mysterious, and yet also uncomplicated—it fit him in all his weird angles and the strange, mischievous light that hovered in his green eyes. He was suddenly aware of how close they were in the little space, with the light from the screen projecting across them. 

“Does this mean what I think it means?” Thor asked him, his breath catching in his lungs.

Loki was inches from him. “What do you think it means?”

He didn’t remember moving his hand, but it brushed gently against that perfect jaw just as Loki leaned forward and pressed a sweet, chaste kiss to his lips. White light burst behind his eyelids as a million things came to bear. Loki smelled lightly of pine and smoke and when Thor’s hand moved, his hair was soft and clean against his fingers. He wanted nothing more than to run his hands through it over and over again. 

When they broke apart, the prettiest pink was dusted across the proud ridges of Loki’s face. Thor smiled. 

“So what do you think of the term ‘boyfriend’?” he asked. 

Loki snorted and shoved him. “I think it will end with me gutting you in an alley and sticking your damn head on a spike,” he answered, settling back into the cockpit.

“So not boyfriend, then, got it,” said Thor, flipping over onto his back as the movie began to play. He offered his hand tentatively and was rewarded with an authentic smile as Loki interlaced his long, thin fingers with his own.

As the first scene rolled, Thor gasped. “Are you fucking serious?”

Loki laughed and it was the most beautiful laugh he’d ever heard in his entire goddamn life. “I pay attention, Odinson, give me some damn credit.”

Thor couldn’t help but roll over and kiss him again as the 1986 classic _Aliens_ played in the background.

_fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


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